


Ghosts Along the Road

by belovedmuerto



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bittersweet, Gen, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Road Trip, Somewhat Fluffy, in a mental sense, some warnings apply, these two idiots, they are both messy, working towards being okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 10:03:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3443099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve goes on a road trip, for his health and sanity. Bucky unexpectedly joins him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts Along the Road

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks and love to Moonblossom for nitpicking this monstrosity for me. Any remaining errors are likely on purpose. 
> 
> I was not expecting this to end up being almost 17k words. It was supposed to be a sort of fun little thing with Bucky crashing Steve's road trip unexpectedly, and instead it turned into this sort of introspective thing about them relearning each other and Bucky trying to take care of Steve and Steve being pretty much a total mess as well as pretty irrational and honestly, I don't even know. I really have no idea what's going on in Bucky's head during all of this, but I don't think it's a fun place to be. Not that Steve's head is better. Anyway, I'll stop blathering. 
> 
> \---
> 
> The wonderful voodooling drew me fanart for this fic! I love it so much you guys! You should go here and check it out and marvel at how awesome it is! http://voodooling.tumblr.com/post/128583668264/bucky-shrugs-its-the-original-mission-the 
> 
> \---
> 
> Please note a couple of warnings: there is a really casual remark made regarding sexual assault by the person to whom it happened (it's just a mention). Also, both of these guys have what is probably really serious PTSD that they are not dealing with. And there is a question posed to one character by another asking if they are contemplating suicide. If any of those is going to be an issue for you, please take care of yourself instead of reading this (alternately, if you'd like to know what sections to avoid, feel free to message me over on [my tumblr](belovedmuerto.tumblr.com) and I can tell you or give you a rough overview of what happens there or whatever).

Steve wakes up with a metal hand clamped tight over his mouth and nose, blocking his air, soft breaths ghosting against his ear like a taunt, and a knife pressed--no. The knife is laid flat against his sternum, and the Winter Soldier is breathing in his ear, knees on either side of his hips, metal hand still clamped over his mouth. He’s shifted enough that Steve can draw breath through his nose, though. He’s not even attempting to pin Steve down, and yet Steve doesn’t fight.

“You’ve really let your guard down, Rogers.” He makes a soft tch sound, admonishing Steve. “There’s a STRIKE team incoming. You should really carry more than a fucking _shield_. Take care of them.”

Steve can only just see him pull back a little in the dark, enough to look down at him, and he nods, once. He has a brief thought that he’s never needed to be on his guard around Bucky, and that’s likely why he hadn’t woken up when he’d broken in. 

Or else, the Soldier is just that good, which might also be true. 

The Soldier doesn’t wait for further acknowledgement, just rolls off him and disappears into the shadows of the room. Steve rolls out of the bed, the knife in one hand, and takes up the shield in his other. The knife is unfamiliar and he’s not great with knives, but he’ll take it, because who knows what the STRIKE team will be carrying.

He wishes he had time to put on some clothes. He should start sleeping in more than just his boxer briefs, but the tiny anonymous motel room had been overly warm, and he’d been too tired and had felt too on edge from being on the road all day, and stuck in traffic for most of it, to go back to the front office and complain.

That, and the guy behind the desk had leered at him in a way that made him vaguely uncomfortable, a strange combination of lust and hero-worship that Steve still isn’t used to seeing directed at him, and had put him wrong-footed, made him stutter through his request for a room for the night.

Steve doesn’t see where Bucky has disappeared to, but he’s not given much chance to look, because that’s when the STRIKE team busts through the door.

They’re all visibly surprised to find him awake, armed already, and they struggle to regroup quickly. Not quickly enough, though, letting Steve get on the offensive right off the bat.

They’re clearly not the cream of HYDRA’s crop, and Steve makes fairly short work of them.

The Winter Soldier is leaning in the bathroom doorway when Steve turns around after the fight is over, his breathing heavy, a scowl on his face. He puts the shield down, the knife on the rickety bedside table, and turns on the lamp, still frowning, unsure what comes next. The five man team is on the floor, all in varying states of broken, bleeding, and unconscious. Steve has a gash across his chest from where one of them had gotten inside his defense, and he’s going to have to clean that up. It itches. Steve rolls his shoulders and takes a deep breath, flashes of memory of his own STRIKE team and the elevator in the Triskelion rolling through his head, shuddering through him. There’s the fine tremor of fading adrenaline running through him, now that the danger is over. 

Or at least, mostly over. He’s not sure why the hell Bucky’s here, now, or what he wants. He hasn’t seen Bucky since the Triskelion. 

They’d looked. They’d looked for months, and a few times they’d come close, but the Winter Soldier was a ghost, and good at it. He hadn’t wanted to be found, apparently, and they hadn’t found him. Steve had nearly driven himself to madness searching, and worrying, and it had all been for nothing. It was Sam that drew him back from the edge, finally convinced him to admit that Bucky wasn’t ready to be found yet, that maybe the Winter Soldier wasn’t capable of being rehabilitated, no matter how much Steve didn’t want to believe it.

He still doesn’t quite believe it. Not even now, especially not now that Bucky’s here, in the same room as him, and smirking at him.

The smirk on his face is all Bucky Barnes, as his gaze travels over Steve, ruffled top to bare toes and back again, and Steve blinks at him, curls his toes against the dirty carpet, then lets himself slump. He tries to think of something to say, but he comes up with nothing. His mind is utterly blank, utterly gray with exhaustion and the fading high of battle. What do you say to your childhood best friend who’s spent the last seventy years as a brainwashed assassin for your worst enemies, the very people you _died_ to defeat?

He doesn’t know if this is Bucky, or the Asset. He doesn’t know, and if he’s completely honest, he doesn’t really care. He doesn’t care if Bucky’s here to finish his mission, here to kill him. At this particular moment, at--he glances at the red numbers on the little clock next to the bed, with the knife in front of it--one fifty three in the morning, he doesn’t care about much of anything other than the blood dripping down his naked chest, making his skin crawl and break out in goosebumps all over, and his desire to _get away_ just for a little while. 

Which is probably why he’s on this little road trip to begin with. Because he doesn’t care anymore, he hasn’t cared since Bucky had very nearly killed him on the helicarrier. He’d been fine with the idea that Bucky was taking his life, and even he knows that’s an issue.

\---

“I don’t think I can do this anymore, Sam,” Steve had said, voice soft and low, staring at the way his hands twist together in his lap, seemingly without his express permission. He remembers wishing he could be still, be quiet, but he couldn’t manage it. Everything hurt, every breath, every movement scraped against his skin, too sensitive, too much. He couldn’t handle it anymore, and he didn’t know what to do.

“Okay, I think we need to unpack this a little bit,” Sam replied, and he was all business, all seriousness and he sat close to Steve without touching him. He leaned back and spread his arms across the back of the couch, but Steve could feel his attention, and somehow it hurt a little less than everything else.

“What can’t you do anymore, Steve? Be as specific as possible.”

“This,” Steve said, hopeless to articulate it more than that. “All of it.”

“What, like living?” Sam asked it matter-of-fact, because Sam was and will always be up-front and frank. And he takes mental health _very_ seriously. It’s one of the reasons that Steve trusted him so implicitly, so completely and so quickly.

“No,” Steve replied immediately. “Not that. Just. All the… stuff. The working, the assembling. The… keeping going. I can’t do that.”

“Okay, this we can work with. You are having a hard time seeing what good you’re doing in the world, and superheroing is getting old?”

“Yeah. I just. What’s the point?”

Sam was quiet for a little while, giving the question serious thought. When he spoke again, he sounded very serious. “Dude, go find a beach somewhere.”

Steve had blinked at him. “What?”

“This is my professional opinion: take a goddamn vacation, Steve. Leave your phone, and leave the city, and buy yourself a bathing suit and go find a beach. Take a good book, and some sunglasses and sunscreen because your pale-ass white boy skin probably burns like a motherfucker, and sit for, like, three weeks. And let the shit that’s happened over the past couple of years go for a little while.”

“Huh,” Steve said. That… actually sounded amazing. 

“And when you come back, if you’re still having trouble, I will find you someone professional to talk to. There’s nothing wrong with needing a hand sometimes, Steve.”

Steve nodded. “Okay. Yeah, I think. I think I’ll do that.”

Sam nodded. “And do the women of the world a favor, buy yourself one of those little speedo suits. You’ve got an ass that won’t quit.”

Steve blinked at him, and Sam had laughed. “Hey, I’m straight, I ain’t dead.”

And as it turned out, Tony does own cars that aren’t flashy as hell, and he handed Steve the keys to one of them with no questions asked. It was a little four door Toyota that looked like maybe it had seen better days, but it runs just fine and gets amazing gas mileage and is even a stick shift, the way Steve learned how to drive back in the war. Tony hadn’t said anything to him about why he’s borrowing the car, but he’d had a look in his eye, like envy, like he wishes he could do what Steve’s doing, sometimes. 

Steve packed up some things, and turned his phone off, and got in the car and went, without saying good-bye to anyone.

\---

Steve is in the bathroom, dabbing at gash on his chest. It’s still oozing a little bit, but it’s already knitting itself back together. It itches like hell. The Soldier is still leaning in the doorway, watching him. Steve feels vaguely self-conscious, but it’s not like Bucky’s never seen him mostly (or all the way) naked before, even if the way he’s watching feels different than it used to.

“You gonna hang out here all night?” the Soldier asks, eventually. His arms are crossed and there’s a frown on his face, like he’s confused by something. Confused by Steve, perhaps? 

“Well, I am paid up through the morning,” Steve retorts. It’s easy enough to resort to sarcasm when he doesn’t know who exactly he’s talking to, or really what’s going on. It’s a defense mechanism that has served him well throughout his life. It’s also gotten him beat up a whole bunch of times, but he’s ok with that. He’s pretty sure he can at least hold his own, if Bucky decides to go that route.

“You should probably get going, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah. Give me a minute, would you?”

“Jesus, Steve, get the lead out.” Bucky throws his hands up and stalks away.

Steve finishes up cleaning the gash and tapes some gauze over it to keep it protected while it finishes healing, trying not to think about how much like the friend he remembers the man had just sounded. He leaves the bathroom and crosses the room to his bag, pulling out a t-shirt, a pair of jeans, socks. He slips them on, watching Bucky stare out the little window at the front of the room, arms still crossed, body tense and alert, on guard against attack or intrusion or something. 

It takes him a minute, but he realizes that Bucky is keeping watch, making sure the danger has passed.

“Um, I guess I should get back on the road,” Steve concedes, as he ties his sneakers. He probably should wait around for the police to show up, but he’s on vacation, dammit. And not with Bucky here, he’s not sure what they’d make of Bucky, and he doesn’t want a law enforcement bloodbath.

“You think?” Bucky retorts, not turning around. 

Steve picks up the knife from the bedside table, and crosses the room to Bucky’s side, tries to hand it back to him. Bucky shakes his head.

“Keep it, you need the practice. Didn’t you used to at least carry a gun?”

Steve shrugs, but he hangs on to the knife. He’ll need to find a sheath for it if he’s going to keep it. And he’s going to keep it, because it’s Bucky who gave it to him.

“You got a deathwish or something, Rogers?”

Steve shrugs again, and then changes the subject, tries to keep the hope out of his voice, the pleading. “You could ride with me.”

“No.”

“But you’re going to follow me anyway? That doesn’t even make sense, Buck.”

“I’m not him, Rogers. Stop thinking I’m him.”

“You are him, you asshole.”

Bucky shakes his head. 

“You should just ride with me. Save yourself the trouble of stealing another car.”

Bucky grumbles something in what sounds like Russian. Steve leaves his side and grabs his bag, his shield. 

Bucky follows him out the door, across the lot to the little car he’d borrowed from Stark, slides into the passenger seat.

Steve starts the car, puts it into gear, and they leave.

\----

They get pulled over just about an hour later.

“Where’s the gun?” Steve asks, keeping his hands on the wheel and glancing over at Bucky, who’s slumped in the passenger seat, against the door. He’d been watching Steve, but his gaze is directed out the window now, probably watching the cop approach in the sideview, or something. 

“It’s under the seat; I’m not a moron,” Bucky retorts. He shifts a little, drops his mouth open, and starts snoring in an incredibly convincing manner.

The cop knocks on the window, and Steve rolls it down, glancing over his shoulder at the trooper. 

“Is there a problem, officer?” he asks, politely. 

“License and registration,” the cop replies. Steve plucks his wallet out of the cup-holder between the seats and flips it open, handing it over. His Avengers id card is right next to his license. 

Not that it’s an official ID, mind. Tony had made them for everyone though, probably as a joke because he’d called them “super secret boy band cards” when he’d handed them out, even Natasha’s, but Steve had appreciated the odd gesture, so he’d hung on to it. Hopefully it was about to be useful. He doesn’t like to flaunt his weird fame, but it comes in handy sometimes, and he really doesn’t want anyone to cotton on to who is sitting next to him in the car.

He reaches over Bucky’s knee and flips open the glove compartment, pulls out the registration and hands that over as well.

“Holy shit,” the cop breathes. “Captain Rogers, I--”

“Is everything okay?” Steve asks. 

“Yeah, fine,” the officer says, handing Steve back his wallet and the registration. “Is everything okay here? You headed somewhere? Don’t you usually have better transport than this?”

Steve smiles and glances over at Barnes next to him. “Yeah, this is personal. My friend Jimmy here just got dumped by his girl. For another guy, you know? So we’re on a road trip, try and buck him up a bit. We’re headed to Florida to find a beach.” 

Steve smiles his best USO smile, and the cop seems helpless to do anything other than smile back. 

A few minutes later, the cop is pulling back out onto the highway in front of them, having secured Steve’s autograph for his kids, and Steve breathes a sigh of relief. Next to him, Bucky straightens up, pulls the gun out from under the seat, checks the clip and the safety, and puts it back. It seems like a gesture of self-reassurance, so Steve doesn’t say anything. He puts the car into gear, and they get back on the road.

Bucky is watching him from across the car, closely. 

Eventually, Steve can’t stand it anymore. “What?”

He can see Bucky shrug out of the corner of his eye. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as a decent liar.”

Steve snorts. “You of all people should know better.” 

Bucky keeps watching him, cocks his head to the side as he thinks. Steve’s seen Natasha do the same thing, and he wonders if they get it from the same place. He wonders how much of his past Bucky actually remembers, but he doesn’t want to ask, and he knows he shouldn’t assume like he just did. He doesn’t know how volatile Bucky is now, how much of him is an actual person, and how much is the Asset. He doesn’t know if he’s even still under the programming, or if he’s shaken it. This whole thing is really an epically bad idea, probably the worst Steve’s ever had.

But then, he also once jumped out of a plane and walked through Austria just on the off chance Bucky was still alive in a prison camp, so he can at least admit to himself that he’s never going to be his smartest when it comes to James Buchanan Barnes. He made his peace with that a long time ago. 

“Hmm,” Bucky says after a few minutes, sounding a little awed, although Steve isn’t sure if that’s because he remembered something from before or for some other reason. Maybe he’s awed that Steve can lie, even though he really shouldn’t be. At all. “You were before.”

It sounds like a concession, like an admission. It’s probably both.

Steve shrugs. 

“You… you tried to enlist a bunch of times.” Bucky seems to be almost talking to himself, as he remembers. “You said you were from New Jersey.”

Steve shrugs again.

“That seems like a real stupid thing to do. Why would you do something so stupid?”

“Which part? The trying to enlist or the saying I was from New Jersey?”

Bucky chuckles, and Steve feels warmth spread through him. He hasn’t heard Bucky make noises of amusement in so long.

“Both.”

They’re both silent for a few minutes, as the road unspools underneath the car. I-95 is pretty much deserted at this time of the morning, nothing but them, a few tractor trailers, and the road. Steve lets it soothe him, despite being uncomfortable with Bucky next to him, unsure.

“So you can lie, sometimes,” Bucky says, eventually. Steve can feel his eyes on him.

“When I’m prepared, yeah,” Steve replies.

“You were thinking about that. You knew it would happen.”

“Well, yeah, I thought it might happen. If the motel had written down the plates on the car, or at least saw it, when I checked in. I’m sure the cops asked who was staying in that room, I guess the guy behind the counter didn’t tell them it was Captain America staying there.”

Bucky seems to consider that for a bit. “Well, you’re not totally hopeless.”

“Gee, thanks.”

They’re quiet again for a while, Steve concentrating on the road, and Bucky staring out the window. It’s not quite comfortable, the silence between them. It seems heavy, laden with something. Maybe it’s the past between them, that only one of them really remembers.

“I went looking for you,” Steve says, eventually.

“I know. You almost caught up a time or two.” Bucky doesn’t look at him. Or perhaps he only looks at Steve’s reflection in the window.

“Probably would’ve found you if Natasha had been with us.”

He sees Bucky shrug out of the corner of his eye. “Perhaps. I’m pretty sure she’s one of the ones I trained, so perhaps not.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that. They’re quiet again for a while.

“So what have you been doing with yourself?” Steve asks. The silence is oppressive. Bucky seems to be getting some sort of sharp thrill out of it.

Bucky snorts. “This and that.”

“Have you, I don’t know, met anyone? Made any friends? Done anything? Gone anywhere?”

“Why are you asking me these things like I’m an actual person?”

Steve hesitates before answering, “Because you _are_ an actual person?”

“Like you know anything about being an actual person. I’ve seen what you’ve been up to the past few years, Steve. You need some hobbies. And a vacation.”

“What the fuck do you think this is supposed to be?” Steve mutters, his knuckles on the steering wheel going white with the force of his grip.

“All right, calm down. You’re a real boy, I promise,” Bucky sneers, but he goes quiet after, looking out the window again. 

Steve keeps his mouth shut, and stares at the road.

“They made me a real person a few times,” Bucky says after a few minutes. He sounds almost as if he’s talking to himself, and Steve doesn’t dare even look at him for fear of shutting him up. “It never went well for anyone involved, especially me. There was always so much pain after, and then the chair.”

“What are you now?” Steve asks, when it seems as though Bucky is finished. His voice comes out a bare whisper. “You seem like a real person to me.”

Bucky shrugs. “The mission.”

“What?”

“I’m the mission. My mission.”

“Your mission.” 

Bucky shrugs again. “It’s what I have. It’s all I need.”

He knows it’s a bad idea, but he asks anyway. Even though he’s afraid of the answer. “What’s your mission?”

“You.”

“Oh.” After a minute of silence, he adds, “Um, oh?”

Bucky shrugs. “It’s the original mission. The original programming. Sometimes it’s the only thing I’m sure of.”

“The original mission?” This is so not a conversation they should be having at almost three in the morning, on the interstate, but Steve also can’t think of another time that would be better. 

“Keep Steve Rogers safe. Keep him alive.”

“Oh.”

After a few more minutes of heavy silence, Bucky shifts so he’s slumped against the door again, and shuts his eyes. “It’s a good mission,” he mumbles.

“Oh,” Steve breathes out, into the air between them, and Bucky doesn’t answer. 

There is nothing but the quiet sound of their breathing in the car for a long time.  
\----

 

Bucky doesn’t relax until they’re well out of Virginia, and Steve doesn’t even realize how tense he’d been, how tense he’d been making Steve, until Bucky relaxes, and Steve with him. 

The sun is just coming up, splashing the sky orange and purple, and Steve wishes he could stop and sit with pastels and paper for a while, trying to capture the beauty of it. But Bucky is only just relaxing beside him, and his stomach is grumbling.

Neither of them has spoken in a couple of hours. Steve is pretty sure that Bucky hasn’t done more than doze off for a few minutes here and there, but he’s been slumped against the door mostly pretending nonetheless. “Are you hungry?”

Bucky’s stomach grumbles in response, and Steve’s answers. He starts looking for a place for them to get breakfast. 

Bucky eats and eats, sitting in the back corner booth of the diner that Steve finds, pancakes and eggs and sausage and bacon, and when he’s slowing down sausage gravy over biscuits, a bowl of grits with lots of butter and salt and cheese, even though he’d looked at them with skepticism when the waitress had brought them over, and cup after cup of coffee.

Steve eats nearly as much, but slower, more carefully. He watches Bucky eating with single-minded focus, even though he knows that Bucky’s also got his eyes on everyone in the diner, and all the possible points of egress. He’s always on alert, even when he appears not to be. 

Bucky is savoring his slice of pie even as he grumbles under his breath about it, “too much sugar, not enough cinnamon,” when Steve speaks. He hates to break the silence, which for once has been companionable, the way he remembers it used to be, but he does it anyway.

“Do you have any gear?”

Bucky looks at him sharply, but he answers. “Various knives, two guns.”

“No, I mean--” Steve shakes his head. “I mean. Clothes?”

“Oh. No.”

Steve nods. He’d figured as much. “We’ll stop off somewhere, get you some stuff. Okay?”

Bucky eyes him, suspicious. “Why?”

Steve doesn’t want to answer with the truth: because it makes him sad that Bucky has nothing but the clothes on his back and a fuckload of cutlery. But he answers anyway, “Well, you can’t keep wearing the same thing the whole time we’re doing… whatever this is. Vacation, or whatever. You’ll stink up the car in no time.”

Bucky doesn’t call him on his lie, although Steve hasn’t had time to prepare this one, and he knows that Bucky sees right through it. But it’s not entirely untrue, either.

Instead, Bucky shrugs. “Whatever, Steve.”

Steve takes a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking, maybe we can stop in Savannah, just for a night or two. I’ve heard that the old part of the city is really gorgeous.”

Bucky shrugs again, and takes another bite of his pie, washing it down with more coffee. They’re going to have to stop for bathroom breaks so many times, with the amount of coffee Bucky’s consumed. He’s going to be wired all day.

“Are you okay with that?” Steve presses. He doesn’t want to force Bucky to do things he doesn’t want to do. He doesn’t even know if Bucky is capable of wanting things, the way he is now. He hadn’t so much picked out his breakfast as basically asked for one of all of the most popular things on the memory.

Bucky shrugs again, and Steve almost growls. “Whatever, Steve. Unless we’re tracked again it should be fine.”

“Do you think we’ll be tracked again?”

“I dunno. They’re not in the best of shape.” Bucky’s grin is feral, vicious. Steve has a feeling Bucky’s been spending his free time picking off whatever bits of Hydra he can find, and while he doesn’t advocate for vengeance on the whole, in this case he’s totally fine with the idea of it.

Later that day, they stop in at an outlet mall near the highway, and go shopping. 

“This is ridiculous, Steve,” Bucky mutters, as Steve parks the car, amongst the sea of cars and people, near the little pretzel stand. 

Steve shrugs. “A lot of stuff is ridiculous these days. You want a pretzel?”

“Sure.”

Steve buys pretzels and sodas for both of them, and they shop. Bucky complains about the soda not tasting right, and Steve agrees with him, although he points out there’s some places where you can still get sodas made with real sugar, and maybe they can find some on this trip. 

Bucky picks out several pairs of jeans (“Why are they so expensive?” he mutters. “Everything is, just go with it,” Steve returns.) and a few shirts, all with long sleeves. He picks up a couple of hooded sweatshirts, too. He seems to get a real kick out of the shirt he finds with Steve’s shield on it, and he insists on getting it even though it has short sleeves. 

Steve’s not sure if the cackling is meant to be at his expense or not. Maybe Bucky just likes the shirt, but maybe he’s making fun of Steve. It’s nice to hear amusement coming out of Bucky’s mouth, see the smile on his face, so he just smiles back and shrugs, even though he’s blushing.

He picks out a bathing suit for Bucky, even though Bucky scowls at him and sneers, “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”

“Go swimming? I’m aiming for a beach, Buck.”

Bucky looks at him closely, as if waiting for the punchline, and then eventually shrugs and adds the suit to his little pile of clothing, without another word. 

They get all the necessities, too, socks and boxers and a pair of sneakers, even some gear for working out. Steve wonders a little at the cost, but he just forks over the cash for it all, and smiles a little at the bored teenager behind the register. The kid doesn’t bother smiling back, just snaps his gum and gives him his bags. Doesn’t even wish them a good day.

They get something more to eat, and get back on the road late in the afternoon. Steve had sort of half-planned to make it all the way to Savannah that day, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. They drive for a few hours, and stop again for the night, at a Holiday Inn Express by the highway.

“We can find a laundromat in the morning,” Steve says as he dumps his bag on one of the two beds. “Wash all that new stuff before you wear it. Someone told me it’s a real good idea to always wash new clothes before you wear them.”

He’s babbling, probably.

“You can wear something of mine for now, if you want?”

“Sure, whatever Steve.” Bucky’s been saying that a lot. Steve wishes he would stop, but he doesn’t know how to get him to do that, short of direct orders that may or may not work, and that’s the last thing he wants to try anyway. At least Bucky’s talking to him, and maybe not sneering quite as much as he had been earlier.

Maybe, anyway.

He still hasn’t quite figured out if it’s Bucky he’s talking to, or some vague approximation of him. Steve still finds he doesn’t quite care. It’s nice to have someone with him, even if that someone is kind of a prickly asshole, who sneers at him a lot and sometimes makes fun of him in a way that doesn’t feel like it used to. Sometimes he’s certain that it’s Bucky he’s talking to, just a Bucky who is rougher around the edges, older and more cynical. But then, Steve is older and more cynical than he was, so he’s okay with that too.

Mostly, he’s just okay with being away, and glad that Bucky’s with him, in whatever form he takes now.

“I’m gonna go shower,” Steve says. 

Bucky nods in acknowledgement. He’s flopped down on one of the beds, his right arm draped over his eyes. 

Steve washes the day away in the shower that’s a little short for him, under water as hot as he can stand it. It’s nothing like the shower in his apartment at the Tower, or even the one in his apartment in Brooklyn, the one he hardly ever gets to spend time in, but it’s sort of comforting, in a strange way. It reminds him that he’s alive, and he’s not at home. 

Bucky is standing over Steve’s duffel bag when he comes out of the bathroom, rubbing his hair dry with one of the dingy towels. He’s holding something, and turns to Steve as he crosses the room.

“Where’d you get this?” Bucky asks. He doesn’t sound curious, or accusatory. He sounds blank, and Steve looks down at the t-shirt he’s holding. It’s the SSR t-shirt. He’s never been able to get rid of it, despite the circumstances in which he’d acquired it. It brings back other memories, more pleasant ones.

“I woke up in it,” Steve tells him. He shrugs, and dumps the towel on the floor, and grabs the t-shirt from Bucky’s hands, pulling it over his head.

Bucky is staring at him, clearly expecting further expectation. 

Steve sighs and slumps down onto the bed. Bucky remains where he was, standing over Steve now. 

“I woke up in this room, and it was bright and sunny, but it smelled wrong, even with the windows open and the breeze coming in. This dame walks in, dressed sort of like Peggy, sort of like a WAC, except all wrong.” Steve shakes his head at the memory. “She wasn’t even wearing a jacket, and everything was wrong and there was a ball game on the radio and it was almost perfect. Almost.”

Bucky shoves the duffel bag over and sits next to him. “What’d you do?”

“Well, I was upset. I thought for sure I’d been captured. I yelled at her, which I shouldn’t have done, but I was nervous, and so sure she was the enemy. So I hit the guys with the guns when they burst in, and I hauled tail outta there. Into… fucking Times Square. Ugh. I thought I was hallucinating, that they’d pumped me full of some drug or another. Felt for sure you’d show up and spring me any minute, you and the guys, before I remembered that you were dead. I went down in that plane certain I was gonna see you again.”

Steve blushes and stares at his hands. 

“They did that to me a few times,” Bucky says, quiet.

Steve looks up at him, waits to see if he’ll continue, and surprisingly enough, Bucky does. His voice makes Steve’s heart hurt.

“Made me think I was home, even though they’d fucked any concept of home I had.”

“What did you do?” Steve asks softly, terrified of the answer.

Bucky shrugs. “Killed a lot of people. The first time I met Sascha was over a dozen dead agents. He was so proud of me. He used to look like you, when he was young.” Bucky glances over at Steve, and then quickly away. “He had soft hair, like yours. Not quite the same color, though.”

Sascha? Oh. Oh, God. Pierce.

“He--” Steve doesn’t even know how to finish that, if it’s a statement or a question or a protest. He’s so glad Alexander fucking Pierce is dead. He wishes he’d been the one to pull the trigger himself. He wishes he could have choked the life out of the man with his own two hands. Yeah, Steve is definitely ok when it comes to vengeance and HYDRA.

Bucky is looking at the floor. “He gave me everything he thought I wanted. Kept the others from me, for a while. He was a good handler. He was gentle with me, when he fucked me. Usually.”

“Jesus,” Steve breathes. His voice is broken, and his face is wet with tears. He doesn’t dare reach out for Bucky though. He doesn’t dare. 

Bucky looks at him, and there’s no expression in his eyes. He just watches Steve crying next to him, and keeps talking. “I knew he wasn’t you, though. Because we’d never. I didn’t know it was you that he wasn’t, but I knew he was just a bad substitute. Don’t cry for me, Stevie. It happened. I’m here. He isn’t.”

Steve wipes his face, and laughs a little, though there’s no mirth in it. Bucky keeps watching him, his face still blank, careful in his blankness, like he’s waiting. 

“That’s maybe not the healthiest way of thinking,” Steve ventures. 

Bucky shrugs. “I like vengeance. It’s worked for me so far. Anyway.” 

Steve huffs another soft laugh, and flops back on the bed, catching his breath, letting the tears go. Bucky leans back on his elbows beside him. 

“Anyway?” Steve asks, a few minutes later. 

“Anyway,” Bucky says. “Peggy.”

“Yeah?”

“She was a hell of a dame.”

Steve smiles at the ceiling. “She still is. She forgets sometimes, though. Only knows me about half the time I visit.”

“She would’ve made you happy. I-- _he_ would’ve been okay with that. You and her.”

Steve blushes to the tips of his ears. When he glances over, Bucky is staring at him. 

“What?” Bucky says.

“Ah,” Steve starts. It takes him a few minutes to manage to get it out. “She told me once.” He blushes some more, he can feel his face flaming, damn his fair skin. “She said she would share me. But only if it was you.”

Bucky blinks at him, then shrugs. “Huh. You’da made it work, too.”

“If I’d gotten my head out of my ass, maybe. But I was pretty stupid, Buck. And it wasn’t, yanno, legal, no matter what neighborhood we grew up in. I really didn’t quite get it, though, not then. I thought she meant as friends.”

“Well, you’re an idiot.”

“You’d have explained it to me.”

“Yeah, but he never got the chance.”

Steve glances over at him, and Bucky is looking at the ceiling. “No. We didn’t.”

A moment later, Bucky gets up. Steve stays where he is, still and quiet. He doesn’t want to disturb Bucky right now, doesn’t want to jostle him or startle him. Bucky paws through Steve’s things for a minute, grabs a couple things, and ducks into the bathroom. A moment later, Steve hears the shower turn on. 

Slowly, feeling heavy hearted, Steve gets up, moves the duffel bag, and crawls under the covers. He listens to Bucky in the shower, and waits for sleep to come for him.

Bucky comes out of the bathroom a few minutes later. He turns off the light and shuffles across the room to the other bed, turns off the lamp on the bedside, and slips under the covers. 

The silence in the room is heavy, and Steve listens to the sound of their breathing, nearly in tandem, until he finally drifts off, hours later.

\----

“I stopped in and saw her,” Bucky says, as they’re walking to the car the next morning.

“Hmm?”

“I saw Peggy, before I came to find you.” Bucky looks over the top of the car at him. 

“Oh.”

“She remembered me,” Bucky continues, as though this is just normal news. As though things aren’t entirely weird between them. As though Steve knows precisely who Bucky is, and neither of them has changed from who they were as boys. “She remembered me. She told me she was sorry.”

Steve can’t quite muffle the noise that comes out of his mouth. He tries to catch it, and fails. Bucky just looks at him, and he almost looks sorry. 

“She reminded me of my mission,” Bucky says, quickly, softly, and ducks into the car.

Steve stands beside the car for another moment. He takes a deep breath, and then opens the door.

They find a diner for breakfast, and the laundromat, and then head out of town.

\----

They finally make it to Savannah, late that afternoon, and check into a hotel on the edge of the historic district.

Steve can feel Bucky’s eyes on him, all the time, while they walk through the historic district, and along the water. He doesn’t care. He’s in seventh heaven, his hands covered in charcoal from all the sketching he’s doing. He wears the baseball cap almost entirely as a way to have somewhere to shove the pencil he’s always got on him. He takes photos with his phone, sends a couple of them to Natasha, to Sam, just as a way to let them know he’s alright. But mostly he draws and sketches, and if Bucky makes it into a few of those sketches, well, that’s because he’s there, and he’s always been Steve’s favorite subject anyway. And he stands out, even among the gorgeous houses and the beautiful squares. He stands out because of the way he looks, the way he watches, and the way he seems to wonder at all of it, like he’s seeing the world for the first time ever.

Bucky sits beside him on various benches, in various squares throughout the historical part of town as he draws pretty much everything: the houses, the trees, the people, the squares themselves. Bucky sits beside him and doesn’t pester him to get a move on, or find something else to do. He seems content to sit next to Steve, or walk at his side, and let him take in the city and draw.

Steve feels the muscles in his back and shoulders unspool, relax for the first time in probably three years, and it’s wonderful. He hadn’t even realized just how tense he’d become in the past few years. They eat in cafes and they eat pralines, and Steve buys some honey on a whim (sourwood) and maybe Bucky watches him a little too closely when he’s trying the different varieties of honey, but he doesn’t say anything about it.

Bucky doesn’t talk much, and Steve doesn’t push him to talk. Somehow, the silence between them is finally starting to feel more comfortable, sitting on benches and walking around Savannah.

Walking back to their hotel after dinner the second night in Savannah, Steve is handed a flier for a drag show by someone on the street. He looks it over, blushing just a bit, and then passes it over to Bucky.

“Wanna go?”

Bucky smirks a little at him, and Steve’s not sure why. But he shrugs after a minute, and says, “Sure, why not.”

Steve has no idea what to wear to a drag show these days. He’d never actually been to one, even as a young man in Brooklyn. Oh sure, he’d been aware of them existing. He’d known which clubs were where a fella went, for that sort of entertainment, but he’d never actually gone. Mostly he was broke, and partly he was afraid, and entirely there wasn’t a man on earth he was interested in other than the guy he lived with.

So he’s curious, and Bucky had agreed.

Bucky picks out clothes for him. He’s not sure how or why, but he takes what Bucky gives him and he puts it on.

The jeans are tighter than he’s used to, but Bucky blinks at him silently when he comes out of the bathroom, and he takes that a good sign. Bucky musses his hair up, and nods at him, and they go.

No one looks twice at them, and they sit in the back at a little table, sipping beers that will affect neither of them. Steve enjoys the show. He likes the queen’s humor, and the crowd adores her, clearly, adores all of the performers. Steve smiles, and he laughs, and he enjoys his beer, and he enjoys relaxing and he definitely enjoys that no one looks at them twice for being two guys at a drag show together, and most of all he enjoys that no one looks twice at either of them. 

No one whispers about Captain America being at a club in Savannah, and it’s the most freedom Steve’s felt since he woke up in the twenty first century.

Bucky watches him the whole time, seeming not to pay any attention to the show at all, even though he smiles when Steve smiles, and he even laughs a few times. Most of all he seems to smile when Steve’s blushing, and when Steve glances over at him, he keeps smiling, and there’s something much like awe in his eyes, and Steve doesn’t know what to make of that.

\----

Bucky crawls into bed with him for the first time that night. Steve is almost asleep when he feels the covers being pulled back, and the bed dipping behind him. He stays still, barely breathing, as Bucky slides in next to him, close and then closer and then draping his arm gently over Steve’s waist. 

A noise that he hadn’t intended, that he hadn’t known would happen, comes out of his throat, and it’s not a happy noise. It’s a pained noise, a wounded noise, and he can’t take it back, it’s out there, between them.

“Go to sleep, Stevie,” Bucky mumbles into his neck, holding him, bracketing himself around Steve.

Surprisingly, Steve falls asleep almost immediately.

If either of them dreams, it doesn’t wake them.

\----

They eat breakfast at the cafe they’d both liked best, and they walk for a bit. Steve buys a little souvenir, a tiny little figure of a girl that the clerk tells him is the bird girl of Savannah, like he should be aware of that. Steve has no idea what she’s talking about, but he likes the little figurine nonetheless. He wraps it in the little plastic bag and tucks it into his duffel bag. 

Bucky is looking at him, as they put their things in the trunk of the car, and Steve can’t interpret his expression. He’s happy that there is expression on Bucky’s face, though, that he’s not working so hard at being blank today.

When they’re in the car, Bucky hands him his sunglasses, and puts his own on before he slumps in the passenger seat, like usual. 

They keep going.

\----

Orlando. It’s earlier than Steve had been planning on stopping, but it seems like as good a place as any, and there are lots of hotels to choose from, and it’s big and anonymous. And he doesn’t want to drive anymore. Bucky sure hasn’t offered to do any of the driving, and Steve hasn’t wanted to ask, either.

He picks a hotel at random, a little nicer than the ones that they’ve been staying in. It has a pool. And room service. Bucky lurks in the lobby with their bags at his feet while Steve checks them in. He asks for a room for two, and the clerk smiles and has him checked in and charged in just a few minutes. He keeps glancing at Steve out of the corner of his eye as he works, and it makes Steve nervous, but the clerk doesn’t mention that he’s Captain America, and Steve lets it go.

“We could go get some dinner?” He suggests, as they’re waiting for the elevator.

“No,” Bucky replies. Steve glances over, and Bucky is staring straight ahead. Steve wonders, idly, if Bucky has problems with elevators. He knows he does, sometimes. This one will probably be ok. It’s actually worse when he can see out of them, somehow. He always sees the Potomac.

“Room service, then?” 

Bucky doesn’t answer, but his stomach grumbles, loudly, and Steve takes that as answer enough. He doesn’t really want to go outside again today either, if he’s totally honest.

He still hasn’t found that beach. He’d really like for there to be no other people on it, for one thing. And he’s starting to think that Florida might not be the best place for that. 

There’s only one bed in the room they’ve been checked into, which is actually more of a suite, with a little sofa that doesn’t look like it would hold both of them at once, and a table with a couple of chairs tucked under it.

Steve blushes, staring down at the bed.

Bucky dumps his duffel on it; either he hasn’t noticed or he just doesn’t care.

“I can call downstairs,” Steve says, and he hates how embarrassed he sounds, and he hates how much he doesn’t want to do that at all. “Get us a different room.”

“It’s fine,” Bucky replies. He’s finishing up his room check, his perimeter check, and he flops down on the couch and shuts his eyes.

Steve feels his stomach drop, in relief or something else. “Okay.” 

He moves around the room, touching things, checking them out, and eventually makes it over to the little table where the room service menu is. There’s also a couple of menus for local places that deliver, although it doesn’t seem like they’re any cheaper at all.

“What do you want to eat?” he asks, flipping through the menu. He wonders if they’d bring him an entire bottle of scotch. He wonders if it would do anything. Maybe if he drank four times as much, it would overcome his metabolism.

“Everything,” Bucky groans. 

All right, everything it is.

Steve doesn’t ask for the scotch. 

The young lady who brings their food stares a little, and Steve can’t tell if it’s because of the sheer amount of food he’d ordered, or because of who he’s supposed to be, but he glares at her, and she blushes and leaves.

He immediately feels terrible about it, and Bucky smirks at him, before poking him towards the table and the food.

They eat in fairly companionable silence, concentrating on the food instead of anything else. Steve finishes first, and pushes his leftovers towards Bucky, who grunts his approval of that and tucks into them as well as what’s left of his own food. Steve watches him for a moment, remembering when they’d lived together, before the war had torn everything apart, and Bucky had thought he’d been so careful about hiding that he ate less so Steve could have more. Steve had noticed, but he’d let it happen, more often than not. He’s happy to let Bucky have his fill now. 

He pulls the little binder of information towards him, for something to look at, mostly. So he doesn’t just sit and stare at Bucky like a doofus. He doesn’t think Bucky would like that, would like him staring. He flips through it, slowly, reading the emergency information (always good to know, just in case something drastic happens and he ends up having to evacuate half the hotel because it’s on fire or something), and then continuing on. He peruses the menu again, even though he’s just eaten a little bit of just about everything on it. 

In the back is information about the theme parks in the area. There are… a lot of them. In the back pocket is a little brochure, colorful and cheerful, about the Magic Kingdom. The happiest place on earth, though Steve somehow doubts that. It sounds neat.

He shows it to Bucky. “Do you remember when we went to see Snow White?”

He probably shouldn’t be asking questions like that, he’s avoided it so far. But it’s already out of his mouth, there’s no taking the words back.

Bucky looks up from his french fries and pancakes. “Sort of.”

Steve doesn’t ask what that means. He shows Bucky the brochure. 

“No,” Bucky says, glancing at it.

“What?”

“We are not going to whatever the fuck the ‘Magic Kingdom’ is. Nope.”

“Oh, no! No, that’s not what I meant. I just--” He stops. He’s not even sure where he was going with that. He was wondering how much Bucky remembers, but he’d opened his stupid mouth anyway.

Steve shrugs. He’s probably blushing. “I don’t know.”

Bucky watches him for a minute, and then returns his attention to his food. While Bucky finishes decimating the food, Steve gets out his laptop and boots it up, follows the instructions for getting on the hotel’s wifi. He checks his email; nothing much there, just a couple of emails from teammates, checking in on him. He emails them back, pleasantries for the most part.

Except Natasha. And Sam. He’s honest with both them. Well, honest up to a point. He doesn’t mention Bucky at all.

He leaves the laptop and goes to the window, takes a picture of the view in the darkness, all the lights of the hotels and restaurants along the road, and he sends it to both of them, labelling it “Orlando”.

Sam texts back almost immediately, _don’t you even dare going to DW without me, Steve._

_DW?_

_Disney World, man. I want to be the one taking a picture of you in Mickey ears with your name on them. Hell, they might even make red white and blue striped ones you could get._

_OK. Sounds good._ It doesn’t, actually, but Steve suspects that going to a theme park with Sam would actually be a lot of fun, even if the idea of doing it right now makes him strangely anxious. Sam’s not even here, he tells himself. You’re not going to any theme parks right now, Bucky doesn’t want to.

Natasha gets back to him a bit later, _get me something from the outlets. designer, preferably. ;)_

_Really?_

_No, Rogers. I don’t require souvenirs._

Steve decides to find somewhere in the morning to pick up a souvenir for Natasha. It would be something nice to do, for a friend, and he thinks it will surprise her, and please her. She lets him read her a little easier than she used to. It makes him feel… special. Present, alive. She’s like a touchstone.

He feels better, for having talked to both of them, but still a little on edge. He doesn’t know why, but he does. It feels like something is looming, although the only thing he’s got on his itinerary right now is sleep and finding that elusive beach. 

Bucky has finally finished eating, and is leaning back in his chair, watching Steve with an expression on his face that Steve can’t quite decipher. It’s not curiosity, but it’s something similar, he thinks.

It makes him feel even more on edge. He turns and goes for his duffel bag. “I’m going to go for a swim.”

It’s late enough now that there probably won’t be many people, if any, in the pool. The families with kids who needed to burn off the excess energy of being in the car all day should have already let them do that, and packed them off to bed.

Bucky doesn’t reply, but he watches Steve grab his swim trunks and go into the bathroom.

Steve tries to remember to breathe deeply as he’s changing, tries to keep it under control. When he comes out of the bathroom, he feels a little better. A little safer. He pulls one of the bathrobes out of the closet, and slips it on. It’s a little short on him, and tight across the shoulders, but otherwise it’s ok. It will do to get him through the hotel without flashing any of the other guests, anyway. 

Bucky is still watching him, arms crossed, leaned back in that chair.

“You coming?”

Bucky shakes his head. 

“Okay. Well, I won’t be too long. Just need to… move. For a bit.”

\----

There’s no one in the pool. Thank god. Steve dumps his towel and his bathrobe on one of the lounge chairs and slips into the water. It’s cool, and soothing. He swims a few lengths, feeling his muscles start to relax again, and he swims a few more, concentrating on his breath, on his strokes. The pool isn’t really big enough for him to really do laps, but it’ll do for now. 

He realizes he hasn’t been working out enough, and that’s probably part of his issue, part of this strange anxiousness he’s been feeling. It probably doesn’t really have anything to do with Bucky at all. 

He looks up when he’s finished with laps, and Bucky is standing at the side of the pool. He’s still wearing the bathrobe he’d put on over his own swim shorts, but his feet are bare and his hair is down around his shoulders, and he’s watching Steve with something like hunger on his face. 

“You coming in?” Steve asks, and his voice comes out a croak.

Bucky shakes his head.

Steve shrugs. He paddles a little back and forth, ducks his head under the water a few times, tries to swim like a dolphin, just messing around. When he glances over, Bucky is curled up on the lounge chair next to where Steve had put his stuff, his knees pulled up, arms wrapped around them.

Steve flips onto his back and floats, occasionally flapping a hand under the water to turn himself or move a bit, and listens to his breathing gusting in and out of his lungs, deeper and slower, deeper and slower. When he glances up again, Bucky is stepping into the hot tub, and Steve watches him sink into the water, watches the way his back moves, looks at the scars on his shoulder, where the arm attaches. He drops his head back into the water, shuts his eyes against the fluorescent lights, and goes back to listening to his own breathing.

It’s nice, floating in the water, feeling weightless for once. 

He hears Bucky splashing into the water of the pool, and he keeps his eyes shut, keeps floating, keeps breathing. He listens to the way the water moves, around him, around Bucky as he moves through it. Even though he’s expecting it, it still startles him when he feels Bucky’s hand on his shoulder.

Steve turns his head and opens his eyes. Bucky is very close to him, only the top of his head, his eyes and his nose out of the water, watching him the way he’s always watching Steve lately. 

Steve straightens up and treads water, even though he could put his feet down on the bottom of the pool. Bucky drifts closer, still watching him. Steve reaches out and brushes a strand of wet hair away from his eyes, and Bucky keeps watching him. Steve wonders, perhaps idly, perhaps not, what it would be like to wrap himself around Bucky right now, and simply never let go. He wonders if Bucky would even allow that. He wonders what Bucky would do if Steve kissed him. 

Bucky puts his feet down and stands, so his head and neck are out of the water. Steve can see the light glint off the metal of his left arm. It must be waterproof.

“Come get in the hot tub, Stevie,” he murmurs, before turning and moving away. 

Steve watches him go to the end of the pool and slosh out, pad over to the hot tub and slip into the water. Now that he’s not listening to his own breathing again, Steve can hear the jets of the hot tub, and he follows. 

He steps down into the hot water, feels it acutely as he sinks in, as it climbs his body. Bucky watches him the whole time, and Steve feels his gaze like a physical weight. It is not an unwelcome one.

The hot tub feels like a cocoon, like they’re entirely alone in this little bubble, in this little world. Steve sinks into the water up to his chin, and leans against the side of the little pool. Bucky is across from him, still watching. Steve can’t tell what he’s thinking, but he’s not sure he wants to, either. 

Steve shuts his eyes against what he thinks might be in those eyes, those familiar eyes. He shuts his eyes, and he sinks a little lower in the water, concentrates on his own breathing again, and on the way the water feels bubbling around him, one of the jets against his side, almost tickling.

He’s not surprised when he feels Bucky move closer to him, feels his breath against his cheek, feels his shoulder pressed against Steve’s under the water.

Steve sighs into the contact, turns his head ever so slowly, and opens his eyes. Bucky is right next to him, so close, so close. For a long time, they just look at each other, drinking each other in. 

Steve doesn’t want to move, he doesn’t want to break the moment, but he can’t hold Bucky’s gaze any longer. He can’t do it, he can’t let himself be flayed open under that scrutiny. He doesn’t even think Bucky’s doing it on purpose. He just thinks Bucky can’t quite resolve his present with his past. He doesn’t think Bucky remembers everything, but he thinks he remembers enough. 

He thinks that Bucky remembers that they were always on the edge of this. Steve remembers it only too well; it’s haunted him since he woke up in this forsaken future. And he can’t stand up to it, not right now. There’s too much static in his head; his skin is still too sensitive. Everything is better, but it all still hurts, it all still scrapes against him, and right now he feels too raw.

He lets his eyes fall shut, and he dips his head a little, in silent apology. There’s a moment, brief and painful, where he thinks that Bucky is going to move away, but he doesn’t. He nudges Steve’s shoulder, just a little, and then. He feels it, feels Bucky lean his own forehead into Steve’s. 

Steve sighs again, and relaxes. He breathes, and breathes, and breathes, and listens to Bucky breathing next to him, in their little cocoon, their little bubble with its bubbling jets and soothing hot water.

Their breathing falls into tandem in only a few minutes, and they stay like that, foreheads together, for a long time, long after the jets in the hot tub have stopped frothing the water.

But they can’t stay like that forever, no matter how badly Steve wants it. The bubble surrounding them is shattered when someone clears their throat from behind them. Steve jerks away, startled, and blinks open his eyes.

There’s a young man in the khakis and a polo shirt standing nearby, looking apologetic. He’s wearing a name tag. He must work for the hotel.

“Sorry guys,” he says, and his voice is apologetic. “I’ve gotta lock up the pool now, it’s midnight.”

Steve nods, afraid of how wrecked his voice would sound if he tried to speak right now. He glances at Bucky, who doesn’t seem to have even spared a glance for the kid kicking them out, and moves towards the steps out of the hot tub. 

Silently, Bucky follows him. They pull on their robes and gather their towels, and the hotel employee follows them out of the pool, locking the door behind him. 

“Have a good night,” he calls, turning in the direction of the lobby.

Neither of them answer. They walk down the hall to the elevator side by side.

\----

Steve can’t help but feel like the moment has been irrevocably shattered. And perhaps that’s for the best; he doesn’t really know for sure that Bucky remembers anything at all. He still isn’t quite sure he isn’t dealing with the Asset, sometimes. Less often than when they first started out, though.

Back in their room, he takes a quick shower to wash away the chlorine, and changes into sweatpants and a t-shirt.

While Bucky is showering, he grabs his laptop and settles on the bed, checks his email again, and starts browsing through his Netflix queue. It’s late, but he’s not ready for sleep; he’s too keyed up. He’s spent too long being all day in the car and not moving anywhere near as much as he’s used to, and it’s making it hard to sleep.

Bucky comes out of the bathroom rubbing his head with the towel. He’s making an utter mess of his hair, and Steve can’t look away. He can’t help smiling, a little. Bucky’s wearing his SSR t-shirt, and Steve wonders if that means something. Probably it doesn’t. Probably it doesn’t mean anything that Bucky’s let him see the arm more and more the past couple of days, today especially. 

He spares a brief thought to be thankful that he hadn’t killed that kid who kicked them out of the pool for seeing him without a shirt on. That would’ve been unfortunate, to say the least.

Bucky drops the towel on the floor, ignoring Steve’s scowl, and climbs into bed beside him. He glances at Steve’s computer, and raises one eyebrow.

“What are you doing?”

It’s the most Bucky’s said to him pretty much all day.

“Looking for a movie to watch. I don’t feel like sleeping yet.”

“You’re bad at this, Rogers.”

“At what?”

“Going off the grid.”

Steve looks at him, confused for a minute. “I’m not trying to disappear, Buck. We haven’t seen anything of Hydra since that first night.” Steve shrugs. “I just need a break from… my life. For a little while.”

It’s Bucky’s turn to shrug, and he looks skeptical. “Alright,” he concedes.

Steve grabs his phone and holds it up. “Besides, I’ve got this thing. It’s a Stark phone. I’m pretty sure that his AI is keeping tabs on me, even if Hydra isn’t on our tail. It’s practically impossible to get off the grid these days. And my friends would worry, if they didn’t hear from me.”

Bucky grabs the phone and turns it over, examining it. “AI?”

“Yeah, JARVIS. Snarky British guy who runs Tony’s whole life, basically. I don’t think it’s standard issue for him to be in all Stark phones. I guess those of us on the team are special, or something.”

Bucky hands the phone back to him and shrugs, but Steve has a feeling that he’s filing that information away, for what purpose he can’t fathom. “Pick a movie yet?”

“I was thinking Lilo & Stitch?”

Bucky shrugs. 

“It’s a Disney film. Seems appropriate for where we are. You okay with that?”

“Sure, Steve.” But Bucky settles in next to him, slumping down against the pillows.

Steve doesn’t ask him if he’s planning on sleeping next to him again, or curled against him, or with his arms around him. There’s only the one bed, after all. Still, he tries not to hope. He just starts the movie and moves the laptop so they can both see the screen.

He must fall asleep at some point, because he dreams. He dreams that Bucky takes the laptop from him and turns off the movie, and helps him get under the covers, somehow without really waking him up. He dreams that Bucky kisses his forehead, and then his cheek, and then his lips, lingering but chaste. He dreams all that, and then he dreams that Bucky curls up next to him in the bed, head on Steve’s shoulder, and hand over his heart.

\----

He wakes up to the smell of coffee, blinks his eyes open slowly, stretches and looks around, yawning.

Bucky is sitting next to him in the bed, his laptop in his lap and a cup of coffee in his hand.

“Morning,” Steve mumbles, turning over and turning his face into the pillow against the bright light of day. He’s not quite ready to face the morning, to get back in that car and get moving. Part of him desperately wants to just stay here for a while, beach or no beach.

Bucky doesn’t reply, doesn’t even look at Steve, but he shifts the mug from one hand to the other so he can reach over and ruffle Steve’s hair. Steve wonders if he’s imagining the way Bucky’s hand lingers against the back of his neck, squeezing gently.

“Time’zit?” Steve mumbles into the pillow.

Bucky’s gaze shifts minutely, and then he replies, “One thirty.”

“What?!” Steve starts to move and yes, Bucky’s hand actually is against his neck, because it’s holding him in place now, all without spilling a drop of coffee or dislodging Steve’s laptop, even amidst Steve’s awkward flapping and yelping.

“I already added a night to the room, Sleeping Beauty,” Bucky adds. He looks down at Steve and smirks.

Steve settles, and Bucky’s grip relaxes. “You shoulda woke me.”

Bucky shrugs. “Here’s fine for another night. You needed some sleep.”

Steve lets himself relax, lets himself melt into the bed. Bucky’s hand is still on his neck. He drifts for a while, content with the occasional sound of Bucky tapping something out on the laptop, making the occasional little noise of amusement or frustration (familiar noises all), and inhaling the scent of coffee. He wonders briefly what Bucky’s looking at on his computer, if he’s data-mining or whatever it’s called, but that would be the Asset, and this doesn’t feel like that. It feels like Bucky, relaxing in bed beside Steve, his best pal, enjoying a rare free day with nothing on and nowhere to be.

Steve determines to enjoy it, too.

“Did you eat yet?” he asks, eventually.

“Couple hours ago,” Bucky replies. He makes a gesture with the coffee cup, and Steve lifts his head enough to see the smattering of empty plates on the table, the remnants of Bucky’s breakfast. 

Steve thinks he’ll want to eat soon, but he’s not ready to get out of bed yet. He’s not ready for Bucky to let go of him yet. 

“We can order more if you want,” Bucky says. “I don’t think they’re doing breakfast anymore, but there’s an IHOP down the street. I hear they have pretty good pancakes.”

“Sounds good,” Steve murmurs. He’s drifting again.

The rest of the day passes quietly. Eventually, Steve gets out of bed and puts on some clothes, and Bucky puts on a sweatshirt over what he’s wearing, to hide the arm Steve supposes, and they walk out of the hotel and down the street to the IHOP.

Steve eats three orders of pancakes, while Bucky watches him with amusement on his face, working his way through his own order of chocolate chip pancakes. They drink two carafes of coffee. No one looks at them twice. Steve loves every minute of it.

Afterwards, they walk down the street a bit. It’s a touristy area, but it’s not overly crowded. There are lots of shops and restaurants and bars, and Steve wanders into what looks like and turns out to be a pretty tacky tourist shop. With Bucky still looking on, Steve picks out garish, tacky souvenirs for the whole team, smiling a mile wide the whole time.

Bucky even smiles a few times, when Steve shows him the things he’s picked out for everyone. He hasn’t met any of them (well, he hasn’t met any of them except Natasha and Sam, and those were under rather unflattering circumstances for everyone involved), so he doesn’t know if what Steve is picking out will be funny or not, he can’t know, and he doesn’t offer opinions. Steve even picks out a couple of extra little magnets, and Bucky makes no comment. He just follows along, patient, seeming content to be at Steve’s side.

\----

They swim again later that night, after dinner. Bucky joins Steve in the pool for a little while, floating around, occasionally bumping into each other. Steve follows Bucky into the hot tub afterwards, but Bucky stays on the other side of the tub the whole time they’re in there, and Steve doesn’t move to close the distance between them.

They’re back in their room, showered and in what passes for pajamas long before midnight. Steve doesn’t suggest watching another movie. He sits on the bed and rubs his hands over his face.

Bucky sits on the sofa, looking at nothing as far as Steve can tell.

“You can have half the bed if you want,” he says, after a while. He doesn’t wait for an answer, he stands and pulls the covers back, adjusts the pillows a bit. When he finally looks over, Bucky is still on the couch, and he shrugs when he sees Steve looking.

“I can take the couch, it’s fine.”

Steve nods. “Okay,” he says. “Well, it’s here if you want it.”

Bucky doesn’t reply. He doesn’t move at all, actually.

“I’m going to set an alarm, so we can get back on the road in the morning. I’m ready to go, yanno?”

“Sure, Steve,” Bucky murmurs in response.

Steve sets the alarm on his phone, and puts it on the nightstand, climbs into bed and turns out the light. He falls asleep eventually, worrying about Bucky, worrying he’s done something wrong, in the past couple of days, worrying that he’s pulling away. It’s a silly worry, though, because it’s not as though they’re together, it’s not as though there’s really any closeness to pull away from.

At some point during the night, Bucky slips into bed with him, sitting beside him. Steve shifts and turns, but he doesn’t really wake up. He doesn’t need to be on alert with Bucky there, he’s never needed to be on alert with Bucky, and even if his brain knows that it’s probably a good idea, his body doesn’t listen.

Bucky is murmuring, and Steve’s mostly asleep mind tells him that Bucky’s talking to him, but the words are low and soft, and he can’t make them out. He doesn’t really try, and he doesn’t drift any closer to awake. Bucky keeps talking to him for a long time.

When Steve wakes up the next morning, Bucky is back on the couch, lounging like he’s been there all night, Steve’s laptop back in his lap. Steve has no idea what he’s been doing with it. He hasn’t asked. He hasn’t looked. He’s not going to do either of those things.

“Did you sleep?” he asks, as he sits up in bed, yawning and stretching.

Bucky nods. “You wanna eat before we go?”

Steve shakes his head. “Let’s just get on the road. We can find something in a bit, okay?”

Bucky shrugs. He shuts Steve’s laptop and gets up. “Let’s get moving then.”

Working easily around each other, as though they’d been back together in the same space for years instead of just a few days, they pack up all their stuff and prepare to leave. Bucky finishes first, probably because he has much less stuff than Steve, and goes to wait by the door while Steve finishes up and does his final check through the room. He grabs the keys and heads towards the door. Bucky is waiting patiently, holding out his hand.

“What?”

“Gimme the keys, ya dope. My turn to drive.”

“Oh.” Steve is surprised, and Bucky scowls at how obvious it is. But Steve is surprised. Bucky hasn’t once offered to drive before now. Not that Steve has asked him to.

“Okay,” Steve adds, handing over the keys. They head down to the car, and get on the road.

\----

Bucky seems to know where he’s going, which Steve finds a little odd. He’s not sure why he finds it odd, maybe it’s because he’s done this entire trip completely by the seat of his pants, no particular destination in mind at all. But Bucky, he glances at the Map app on Steve’s phone for a few minutes before handing it back to Steve and starting the car.

Bucky heads west, and a little north. Towards the Gulf, anyway. Steve hadn’t expected that. He’d been thinking about finding one of the beaches along the ocean side of the state. But this works too. He’s fine with just about anything, as long as there aren’t a lot of people around and he can relax and enjoy the water. He has no real destination in mind. He never has. Maybe he’ll just keep going, whether Bucky wants to stay with him or not. Maybe he’ll just… never go home.

“Pick out some music, pal,” Bucky instructs him, after they’ve stopped for breakfast. Steve flips through the channels for a while, settling on an oldies channel. It’s still mostly new to him, but he finds it soothing. It’s almost familiar, for all that it isn’t familiar at all.

Bucky had been choosing the music the past several days while they’d been on the road. Mostly top 40 stuff, which had surprised Steve, although he’s not sure why. What had really surprised Steve was the few times Bucky would sing along with the music, always softly, almost under his breath. Always Taylor Swift, except when it was Katy Perry. Steve desperately wants to know how Bucky knows Taylor Swift songs. He wants to know what about her appeals to Bucky (not that he doesn’t enjoy her stuff sometimes. It’s catchy. And he finds her strangely adorable, although he’s sure that’s not an opinion he should share with anyone. Ever). He wants to know _why_ , and he’s pretty sure he shouldn’t ask. At least not right now. Steve’s honestly not even sure how Bucky knows who either of those singers are, but he does. And it had been real nice, hearing him sing along with something again. It had been too long. So he keeps his mouth shut, and he let it happen. 

He doesn’t know where they’re going, but Bucky sure seems certain of his direction, so he slumps in the passenger seat and lets the road pass out the window, watching it blur by and letting his thoughts wander.

\----

Sometime around mid-afternoon, Bucky steers off the highway and into a small town. He pays close attention to the roads, and eventually, they pull up in front of a little house. There’s flowers everyone in the front yard, and a big tree casts shade over the house. It looks like a home.

Steve looks at him with raised eyebrows, but Bucky doesn’t respond. For a minute, he just sits with his hands clasped on the wheel, eyes shut. As Steve watches, his posture shifts into something else. Something more relaxed, less alert. More exaggerated. Louder, more attention seeking. He shrugs a few times, and he rolls his head from side to side, as if stretching, as if settling something over his shoulders.

“Stay here,” he says, and he smirks at Steve, the way he used to.

Steve watches silently as Bucky leans over and gets the gun out of the glove box, checks it, tucks in the back of his jeans and pulls his shirt over it, gets out of the car and jogs up to the porch, knocks on the front door, and realizes that Bucky just put on something like his old self. Like a disguise. It’s a little disconcerting, but it also makes him think about the way Bucky has been since he showed up in Steve’s motel room last week, and how he likes the new, quieter Bucky as well. 

None of the ways either of them have changed and been changed makes any difference to the way Steve feels about him, and it’s nice to be certain of that. He supposes, as he watches Bucky fidget and wait on the porch, that he’s always been certain of that, ever since he woke up with this new version of his best friend crouched over him in that bed, but it’s nice to be conscious of it. It’s nice to be certain of his certainty.

He shakes his head at himself. He really needs to get out of his own head for a while; he’s getting maudlin.

Steve waits and watches while a young woman answers the door, and Bucky smiles and flirts a bit. He waits while the woman disappears and is soon replaced by an older woman. Steve guesses she must be the girl’s mom. She hands Bucky a couple of sheets of paper and a set of keys, and he hands her an envelope, and gestures at the car. Both turn and wave at Steve, and Steve waves back, smiling a little. 

He has no idea what’s going on, but he has a few ideas.

Steve wants to pelt Bucky with questions when he returns the car a few minutes later, but he holds most of them in. Bucky grins at him and hands over the new set of keys. He’s still wearing the persona he’d put on. Steve’s starting to find it a little odd.

“Were you expecting trouble?” Steve asks when Bucky gets back in the car.

Bucky shakes his head and shrugs. “I’m cautious.”

“You think?”

Bucky snorts. He hasn’t dropped this new person he’s being yet.

“Mae Lynn says we should stop for some grub on our way through town. Perishables, mostly. Sound good?”

“Sure, Buck.” Steve decides in the face of that grin not to ask any more questions at all.

They coast through the little town slowly. Steve hangs on to the keys he’d been given as if his life depends on it. He knows what he hopes they go to, but he’s not going to ask.

He’s not. He’s really not. He doesn’t.

They stop in the small local grocery store and pick up enough food for what would probably be a month for normal people, but for them might be enough for the rest of the week.

Once they’re back in the car and heading out of town again, Bucky drops the act, literally shrugging it off with a few shakes of his shoulders and a twist of his head that almost looks like he’s trying to crack his neck, and Steve breathes a sigh of relief. It’s nice to know that he can see the difference between the way he’d pretended to be and the way he actually is. He likes the way Bucky is now. They still fit together like two halves of a whole.

\----

It’s a cottage, and Steve finds himself grinning from ear to ear as the car comes into the clearing it sits in. Its design is fairly modern, with a curved roof that reminds Steve of a wave, and makes his hand itch for a pencil, and it stands above the landscape on stilts, almost in the trees that surround and shade it. 

Beyond the cottage is the beach, and the water, gentle waves lapping on the shore.

Bucky pulls right up to the stairs leading up to the little porch and entrance, and turns the car off. Steve stumbles out of the car, still staring. When he finally turns to look at Bucky, he’s watching Steve, unmasked joy on his face, and Steve just grins at him for a minute.

“Where did you find this place?” Steve asks, not bothering to temper the awe in his voice. He never could’ve imagined a more perfect place for a vacation. To get away for a while.

“Google,” Bucky replies, and Steve laughs. He laughs, and when he stops he finds Bucky is watching him still, a hint of a smiling pulling at the corners of his lips. 

They gather their bags and the food and climbs the stairs. Bucky makes a gesture with his shoulder, since his hands are full, and Steve puts down a couple bags so he can unlock the door.

The cottage is airy and open and smells of fresh air and the Gulf beyond the windows. Steve puts his bags down in the entryway, and wanders deeper into the house. Bucky takes the bags of food that he’s carrying through into the small kitchen. The cottage is mostly one level, open and inviting. There’s a large porch at the back, and it seems like the whole wall is windows. There’s a loft above, and Steve climbs the ladder-like stairs to see the sleeping area. It’s probably large enough for more than one bed, but it’s occupied by what is probably the biggest bed Steve’s ever seen. One bed. He blinks at it a bit, and then climbs back down the stairs and wanders into the kitchen. He props one hip against the counter and watches Bucky putting things in the fridge, going through the cupboards to see what’s already there. 

“One bed, huh?” Steve asks, eventually. He feels almost playful. He feels like a very vast weight has been lifted off his shoulders. He felt it as soon as they set foot in the cottage.

Bucky glances over his shoulder at him, and that is definitely a blush high on his cheeks. He glances away quickly, ducking his head so his hair hides his face.

“That a problem?” Bucky asks, moving back into putting food away, not looking at Steve.

“Nah,” Steve replies. “Not for me.”

Bucky nods. “Good.”

Steve watches him move around the kitchen for a few minutes longer. He seems more relaxed than he has been, and Steve wonders if this is as much a respite for Bucky as it is for him. Bucky is doing this for him, he supposes, but he’s probably also doing it for himself. Maybe Bucky just needs to stop running for a while, stop hiding. And Steve is infinitely glad that Bucky appears to trust him enough to take him along for the ride. Or ride along with him. He’s not really sure who’s accompanying whom at this point, who’s doing the protecting and who’s being protected.

He’s not sure he cares. They can protect each other. They’re both more than capable, now. 

When he tears himself away, it’s to grab toiletries out of his bag and stow them in the bathroom, making note of all the fluffy towels, both for the beach and for the bath, and then take their bags up to the loft. 

The bed looks amazing, soft and inviting, and Steve takes a minute to sit down and take his shoes off, and then flop back, nearly groaning at how wonderful it feels.

“Hey Steve,” he hears, a few minutes later.

“Yeah?”

“Come on, let’s go for a walk or something.”

“Ugh, does that mean I have to put shoes back on?”

He hears Bucky’s soft huff of a laugh, and he smiles to himself. “No, punk, we’ll walk on the beach.”

\----

There’s no one on the beach. Not a single other person beside the two of them. And it is a gorgeous stretch of land. Just beyond the edge of the treeline, there’s a group of adirondack chairs and a fire pit. 

“Where are all the people?” Steve asks as they venture towards the water.

“Private beach,” Bucky answers.

“You’re kidding.”

Bucky shakes his head. They’re staying in a cottage with a private beach. Steve thinks he may possibly swoon from happiness, and if the way Bucky’s grinning at him now is any indication, he’s well aware of it. 

“How much did all this cost?” he asks, instead of admitting that he might cry.

“Enough,” Bucky answers, with a shrug.

Steve stops walking and turns to him, halting him with a hand on his arm. Bucky looks at him, down at his hand, and back at him. Steve starts to let go, and then doesn’t. Bucky isn’t shaking him off. Steve steps closer, instead. 

“Thank you,” he says, quiet and low. “For everything.”

Bucky ducks his head, hiding behind his hair again, but he maybe nods as well. He definitely bumps his shoulder into Steve’s lightly, before he turns and keeps walking. Steve falls into step beside him.

\----

They walk for a while, and then eat. They’re definitely going to have to go back into town and get more food. Steve will probably feel guilty for how much of the non-perishables they’re going to end up going through as well, and will insist they restock, even though those are included in the price of the rental. 

After they eat, they wander back outside to the fire pit. They don’t light a fire, they just sit and watch the water, watch the dying light of the day, and enjoy the quiet and each other’s company.

They both shower before bed, and they both make inarticulate noises of pleasure when they climb between the sheets of the frankly decadent bed.

\----

Neither of them sleeps well that first night. Perhaps it’s the quiet, or perhaps it’s that it’s the first time either of them has felt the ability to actually relax in god only knows how long. Perhaps it’s that they both have nightmares.

Steve wakes up with a start, his breath stuttering in his lungs, heart pounding. He’s not sure if it was the nightmare that woke him up, or something else. He can hear Bucky gasping for breath in the bed next to him. Steve turns his head, but Bucky is curled on his side facing away from him. He doesn’t want to reach out if Bucky’s still asleep; he doesn’t know if he’d react violently to being woken up.

“Buck, you awake?”

Bucky shifts, and then rolls onto his back. “Yeah.”

“Nightmare?”

He can see Bucky nod in the dim light of the moon shining into the cottage. 

“Me too.”

Bucky heaves a sigh, but he doesn’t speak again. Steve decides after a few minutes that he doesn’t want to get out of bed, even if he’s not sure he’s going to sleep again. He shifts closer to Bucky.

“Can I?”

Bucky glances at him, and nods, and Steve curls around him, head on his shoulder, arm and leg thrown across him. Bucky moves so he can put his arm around Steve, and they stay like that for a long time, breath falling into tandem. Steve listens to Bucky’s heart as it settles, counts its beats until he feels like it’s matched to his own.

Eventually, they both fall back to sleep.

\----

Steve wakes up early, with his head still against Bucky’s chest, Bucky’s arm still around him. He tries to stretch without moving much.

“I’m not good,” Bucky says, in lieu of good morning.

Steve takes a minute to process the words, and then twists to look up at him, but Bucky’s not looking at him. 

“Yes you are,” he replies.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Steve waits. 

“I mean, I’m not alright. I’m not--whatever. I’m not good.”

“Oh.” Steve tightens his arms around Bucky, tries to convey with it that it’s okay. “Neither am I,” he admits.

“No shit,” Bucky mutters. After a moment, he sighs, and pats Steve’s back, and pulls away, sits up. Steve watches him go, lets him retreat.

\----

Bucky sits down on the sand next to Steve, who looks up from his book.

“I don’t know if I’ll remember everything,” Bucky says without preamble. He tugs his t-shirt over his head, and hands Steve the bottle of spray-on sunscreen. Steve makes a gesture and Bucky turns so Steve can spray his back. Bucky had done the same for him earlier before he’d left the cottage.

“What do you remember?” Steve asks. He wants to know, and he doesn’t.

Bucky shrugs. “Some stuff. Pieces of things. Feelings. I remember how terrified I used to get when you’d have an asthma attack and all I could do is sit behind you and breathe and breathe and breathe and pray that you’d keep breathing.”

Steve takes a deep breath, reminds himself that the asthma isn’t a problem anymore.

“I remember the way my ma smelled, and doing Becca’s hair. How mad I was when I got my draft notice.”

“I thought you enlisted.”

“And leave you before I absolutely had to? You ran off and let the Army experiment on you as soon as I left.”

Steve chuckles. “Well, you’re not wrong.”

“I remember--I think I remember that I knew you, on the bridge. Before they wiped me again. Sascha hit me.”

“Buck--”

“He’s dead, Stevie. I remember that, too.”

Steve leans forward, until his forehead connects with Bucky’s back, between his shoulders. “I wish I’d killed him myself, Buck.”

“Yeah, me too.”

The sit quietly for a few minutes, and then Bucky speaks again. “There’s a lot that’s gone though, Steve. And I don’t know if it’ll ever come back. I just don’t know.”

“It’s okay if it doesn’t, Buck. You’re still you.”

Bucky keeps going. “There’s a lot that I don’t remember, but you. You came back to me, or at least enough of you to be going on with. So there’s that, at least.”

Steve smiles, even though Bucky can’t see him. “Yeah. There’s that.”

\----

After dinner, they go outside in the fading light of day, and start a fire in the firepit. They pull the adirondack chairs closer together and sit around it for a long time, as the light disappears, and the stars come out. 

“I’m okay right now, I guess,” Bucky says, after a long time of silence between them. 

Steve wonders if he’s been saving up all these things he needs to say, waiting until they were truly alone to force it all out. He stays quiet, hoping to encourage him to keep going.

“But Steve, that’s going to change,” he adds, after a few minutes. “I’ll probably get a lot worse before I get better. There’s just… too much. I don’t think I’ll lose you again, but I’ll probably lose other stuff. I might lose everything. I won’t be able to take care of you like I did or like I’ve been trying to. You gotta know that.”

“I could take care of you for a while, Buck. I can do that.”

“Can you do it and take care of yourself? Cuz you’re pretty shitty at that, Steve.”

Steve doesn’t reply. 

“I’m missing so many pieces it’s like I’m not even an actual person. I’m not an actual person right now, not really.”

“Yes you are, Bucky.”

“I’m not. Not really, Steve. But you can’t see that, because you aren’t either.”

“What?” Steve pulls back from where he’d almost leaned his head on Bucky’s shoulder. He can barely see him, his face in shadows from the flickering light of the fire. What’s that even supposed to mean?

“Steve, you’re falling apart; you’ve been falling apart this whole time. It’s why you’re doing this, isn’t it?”

Has Bucky always been this insightful?

“When it comes to you I have. And apparently even missing large chunks of my life I still am. You’re a mess, Steve. It’s okay, so am I.” Bucky looks at Steve, that same steady gaze he’s been directing at Steve for days and days, and shrugs a little. 

Steve’s heart breaks at the pain flickering in Bucky’s eyes, but he thinks it might be reflected in his own. He has to look away, duck his head, look at the fire, look at the way the light reflects off the trees overhead, look at anything except Bucky. 

Bucky lets him sit quietly, looking at everything else. After a while, he reaches out and takes Steve’s hand. Steve looks at their entwined fingers, and he tries to figure out how to put it in words, the way he feels, the way everything seems stacked against him, the way he feels like he’s drowning all the time but everyone around him can’t see it, or just doesn’t care because he’s got a job to do and that’s all they want him for, but he fails, utterly.

It’s not true, he knows people care about him, but it feels like they only care about Captain America, not about Steve.

And he suddenly understands that Bucky feels exactly the same way, and probably has for a lot longer than Steve. Except when he was in cryofreeze or his brain was so scrambled he couldn’t feel anything at all.

“Aren’t we a pair?” he murmurs.

Bucky squeezes his hand. “Yeah. We are.”

They sit until the fire dies down, and then Bucky stands, tugging Steve to his feet. “Let’s go to bed.”

\----

For a couple of days, they don’t talk about it. They don’t really talk about anything, settling into something of a routine. They get up in the morning pretty much at the same time, make breakfast, and spend the morning sitting on the beach and splashing in the water. In the afternoon, they go for walks or sit around the house or something else. In the evening, they eat dinner and then sit out by the firepit, close together, more often than not holding hands. Reminding each other that this is real, they’re both here and alive and more or less okay for the time being.

Steve feels like something has shifted, but he can’t quite pinpoint it. Bucky feels closer than he ever has, even when they were young and living in each other’s pockets. And it doesn’t even appear that anything has changed. Maybe it’s just that Bucky seems easier here. He seems more present, now that he’s gotten the things off his chest that he needed to. Now that he’s given Steve the opportunity to pledge himself to Bucky, to staying with him.

He’ll stay, no matter what. He’s glad Bucky seems to get that, now. He’s glad, in a strange way, that they’re both messy right now. Neither of them is okay, but they’re in it together.

Steve hasn’t asked how long they have in this place, because he doesn’t really want to know. He doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to go back to life right now. He’s not ready to deal with it yet. He’s definitely not ready for what Bucky’s going to have to deal with yet.

\----

He’s standing ankle deep in the warm water of the Gulf, staring at nothing in particular, thinking of nothing at all, really, just breathing and letting the sun warm him, when Bucky comes up next to him. Steve had left him napping on the couch in the house; neither of them had slept well the night before.

It had been a nice reprieve, when Bucky had joined him, and for a little while he’d stopped having nightmares. Bucky hadn’t had any at first either, but they both are again. It couldn’t last forever, Steve supposes.

“Hi,” Steve says.

Bucky stands close to him, slips his arm around Steve, and Steve drapes his arm over his shoulder in return. 

Bucky doesn’t reply, he just leans into Steve, and for a while they stay like that, not talking, standing ankle deep in the water, waves lapping gently at the shore just behind them, enjoying the sun and the warm water. 

When Steve finally shifts to look at Bucky, Bucky’s already looking at him, just looking at him the way he has been forever, or at least the last couple of weeks. Maybe Bucky really did always look at him that way, and he was just too blind and stupid and angry at the whole world to notice it.

Well, he’s still blind and stupid and angry at the whole world. Maybe he’s just ready to see the way Bucky looks at him now.

He’s not expecting it, when Bucky puts his hand on Steve’s face and kisses him, and yet, he’s not surprised. At first, he just lets it happen, for a moment, before he puts his other arm around Bucky and kisses him back. They stand in the warm water, waves lapping at their ankles, alone on a private beach, alone in their whole world for that one moment, kissing each other.

Steve pours everything he’s ever had into kissing Bucky, and it feels like Bucky’s doing the same. 

Bucky breaks the kiss, breathless, and starts to lean back, but Steve drags him back in, not ready to give this up yet, not ready to let go of the peace of it, of the shimmering heat between them. Eventually, though, Steve lets Bucky break the kiss, both of them breathing hard, and Bucky leans his forehead into Steve’s.

“This is probably a terrible idea,” Bucky murmurs. 

“What? No,” Steve replies. He tries to smile, even though his heart feels on the edge of breaking into a million tiny shards, if Bucky rejects him now. “I’m pretty sure this is actually the best goddamn idea you’ve ever had.” 

“No, I mean. Right now.”

“Oh.” Steve tightens his arms around Bucky and tries to figure out what he wants to say. “Um, do you think I’d hold you back? Or. Or make things worse for you?”

It’s hard to get the words out. Steve shuts his eyes and doesn’t move. He barely breathes.

“No, Steve,” Bucky replies. “I think I need to know I’ve got one good thing going on when everything goes to shit, because everything is definitely going to go to shit, probably more than once, even if I don’t deserve you. And if I don’t do something about it now, I’m afraid I never will.”

“You deserve good things,” Steve replies. He opens his eyes, and lifts his head, to glare at Bucky, because he doesn’t ever want to hear Bucky get down on himself. “And you know how I feel about you, right?”

“Yeah Stevie, I do.”

“Okay, well, let’s go inside and neck on the couch for a while. Or the bed. Or something like that.”

Bucky smiles at him, chuckles a little, and says, “Okay. Let’s do that.”

\----

“We could stay here,” Steve ventures. 

They’re in bed, tangled together, mostly naked. They’ve been talking. Or rather, mostly they’ve been kissing, but occasionally they talk as well. Sometimes, instead of either of those things, they simply lay quietly together, arms around each other, breathing together.

“Hmm?” Bucky replies, a hum he can feel against his neck. 

Bucky shifts against him a little, pressing his nose against Steve’s neck, and Steve shivers a little bit.

“We could stay here,” he repeats, when he finds his voice. “Get a place, or something. Just. Stay.”

Bucky is quiet for a minute, and Steve lets him think, running his hand up and down Bucky’s bare back. 

“No,” he says eventually. “Let’s keep going.”

“Where?”

Steve can feel Bucky shrug, and he props his chin on Steve’s chest. “I dunno. Let’s go west. I’ve never seen the Grand Canyon. We used to talk about that, didn’t we? When we were kids?”

“Yeah, we did.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Pacific. Let’s go all the way to the coast.”

“Okay,” Steve says. He’s grinning at the ceiling. “Let’s keep going.”


End file.
